Geoff, Being relatively new to the whole open source licensing models, I want to give a scenario which may not be far off for me as my current work, a hospital, is going through CMS evaluations to replace its existing one. Seeing how other CMS vendors cater to the medical world has me thinking about this scenario:
1. Company A decides to use the FarCry CMS and core framework as the basis of its work in the medical/hospital market 2. Company A builds a number of custom objects that meet the needs, in general terms, of medical providers. These objects utilize the core framework through the APIs documented to be loaded and utilized within the CMS plug-in. 3. Company A sells its services for installing and setting up the needed FarCry components as well as the package of custom objects to various clients. Now, I'm sure any company out there utilziing FarCry probably does something similar to this scenario, just substitute medical for whatever. Is the essence in licensing change mean that even though Company A utilized a public API for a framework, as that's what the FarCry core has been termed as, these objects would have to be released under (L)GPL if Company A does not purchase a commercial license? Is that the essence of what this change would mean to developers using FarCry to provide solutions to customers using the same "solutions"? Thanks, Phil On Wed, May 7, 2008 at 10:27 AM, modius <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On May 7, 11:21 pm, "Mark Kruger" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Having read your post I note this at the bottom: > > Like many things in life, this is not a democracy. Daemon, as the sole > > copyright holder of the code base for FarCry Core and FarCry CMS, is > > entitled to make this change at any time. We are looking to our community > > for feedback in order to help us in making the right decision. > > > > Technically I'm sure this is true. However, over the years community > members > > have donated time and effort into the cause including module development, > > documentation, bug hunting, expert advise. We have all "invested" in > Farcry > > and we all have a stake in the code - that's what open source really > means > > to us and why it works. So while you probably have a right to do this it > > seems a little underhanded. > > Although we are most assuredly within our rights to make a change to > the underlying license, we could never deprive the community of its > investment. If the community felt very strongly about the change it > would be within its rights to fork the code base -- it is open source > after all. Obviously we want to avoid a fork at all costs and > consequently we're looking for feedback before making any changes. > We're really trying to be as open as possible about this proposal. > > If we do make the change to GPL, we still intend to maintain the > existing FarCry 4.0 maintenance branch under CPL for the foreseeable > future. > > > CF Webtools has a lot invested in FC. We have nearly 35 sites. We > recommend > > it for projects on a monthly basis. We have 5 sites on tap for next > month. > > We can probably purchase commercial licenses (assuming they are > reasonable) > > because we can bundle it into our estimate and cost. In some cases we > will > > be able to contribute back to the project under the dual license model - > so > > this may not affect us too much. But we use FC because we are invested in > it > > as a product... we have a stake in it. Although we acknowledge is is a > > daemon project - we feel like it belongs to us as well... like we have > had a > > part in it's success. That warm feeling will probably go away if we head > > down this route :) > > Under GPL it's still very much open source -- the only difference > being that without a commercial license, your own or your clients > closed-source modifications may need to be published. > > Is your stake really made the lesser by the use of GPL? How does the > move to GPL impact your existing business model? Is there anything > specifically you can no longer accomplish under GPL? Perhaps an > appropriate license exception can be made? > > Despite its shortcomings GPL could potentially be used to enforce a > "quid pro quo" policy within the community. Most users are unlikely > to be affected -- certainly Joomla, Mambo, Drupal and many other > solutions are quite happy on GPL. Those with the potential to be most > affected are developers and organisations deriving a commercial > advantage from the use of closed source code in conjunction with open > source FarCry. And heh, that's great. However, its difficult to > justify our enormous investment in this superb product while less > enthusiastic teams benefit from those labours with little or no > contribution to the community. This would give us a chance to recoup > some of that investment, either in code or in license revenue to help > fund future development. > > Thanks for your candid feedback -- its appreciated, > > -- geoff > http://www.daemon.com.au/ > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "farcry-dev" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/farcry-dev?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
